Thinking About Your Thinking. A Key To Your Future Happiness.

Photo by jose aljovin on Unsplash

“There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.” Peter Drucker

Don’t you just hate guys like Drucker – dragging up so much truth and reality and sticking our noses in it? As a world changer, he got away with that tactic for decades – and still does, posthumously.

I just hired a business coach this month. After hearing my sad story of how my return for time invested in what I do is so dismal, she insisted I track my time in 15-30 minute increments for a few weeks.

My ego pushed back on the idea – because I knew what it would reveal and I felt some resentment at the subtle insinuation that my use of time is likely, well, Drucked up.

Well, I’m several days into tracking.

Yep, it’s Drucked up.

Where does this time-sucking stuff come from?

Based on what my timesheets are telling me, I better figure that out. I’ve set some ambitious targets for my business this year as a career transition specialist for healthcare professionals.

Somethin’s gotta change.

Thinking about thinking

This business coach experience I’m having has convinced me that I’ve gotten pretty lax in thinking about my thinking.

So, in addition to getting help in getting my business cranking, I’ve decided to immerse myself in the workings of four powerful thinkers: Steve Chandler, Michael Neill, Steven Pressfield, and Seth Godin.

I’ve decided I will be well served to do no reading outside of these four authors this year. There’s plenty there to fill the year since there are 30-40 hard-hitting books across the four of them.

I’ve written about Chandler before – I and his books go back almost 10 years. I’ve got nearly a dozen of his books on my shelf and on my Kindle, some of which I’ve read several times. They are fresh every time I read them.

Those that stand out are:

Time Warrior: How to Defeat Procrastination, People-Pleasing, Self Doubt, Over-Commitment, Broke Promises, and Chaos

Fearless: Creating the Courage to Change the Things You Can

The Story of You (And How to Create a New One)

While Chandler will certainly challenge you to “think about your thinking”, Michael Neill takes that to a whole new level.

I remembered that I had “Supercoach: 10 Secrets to Transform Anyone’s Life” languishing on my shelf.  So, I pulled it down last month and was shocked to discover that I had already read it three times, going back ten years.

I was more ready the fourth time. And it has inspired me to invest in two of his later books:

“The Inside-Out Revolution: The Only Thing You Need To Know To Change Your Life Forever.”

“Creating the Impossible: A 90-Day Program To Get Your Dreams Out Of Your Head And Into The World.” 

With Pressfield, no need to stray further than his classic “The War of Art.”

And Godin? All 18 of his books got progressively better and culminated in “The Practice.”  It awaits my fourth reading.

A system called today.

You will find a couple of persistent themes throughout this collection of books:

1. We are only as healthy as our ability to gain control of our thoughts.
2. Thoughts make a great servant but a terrible master.

If I want them to serve me, then I need to get them under control.

But thoughts are like a busy train station that never closes, delivering 60-70,000 thoughts a day, with each thought like a car on the train inviting us to travel with it.

Bad choice, bad destination. Unless you step off the train.

Supercoach Michael Neill talks about this in his book “Supercoach: 10 Secrets to Transform Anyone’s Life,” stating:

” — our thoughts are simply internal conversations and mental movies that have no power to impact our lives until we charge them up by deciding they are important and real. And if we “empower” the wrong thoughts, making our negative fantasies seem more realistic than our external reality, it’s like boarding a train to a destination we have no desire to actually reach.”

Some of my days are like that.

Steven Pressfield talks about it in his classic book, “The War of Art.” It’s called resistance.

Resistance is that spirit thing within us all that doesn’t want us to be efficient, happy, or successful. It disguises itself cleverly among the estimated 65,000 different thoughts that train through our minds daily. It then steps off the train at the worst times and takes a prominent seat smack in the middle of our day.

At this point, I find Steve Chandler’s advice in “Time Warrior” the most helpful in attacking my efficiency problem. Here are a few paragraphs that resonate:

“A time warrior doesn’t manage time but goes to war with all the beliefs that create linear time. Only a thought can produce a feeling of overwhelm. There is no overwhelm when you only do what is in front of you.  One hour of uninterrupted time is worth three hours of time that is constantly interrupted.”

“Non-linear time management doesn’t ever have a long timeline. It has two choices: now or not now. It’s built on a system called “today.”

“Age is a made-up story. I have only 2 ages – now and not now.”

Abundance is a thought.

This quote by Arnold Patent stuck with me this week. It speaks to the power of thought:

“We don’t create abundance. Abundance is always present. We create limitation.”